Gordon Lightfoot Forums - Ghosts of Cape Horn Documentary

An addendum to my last post from watching the whole thing to the 1/2 way point for 1st post, then this reply after finishing the film....

I DID see National Geographic (NatGeo) listed in the "Thanks to the assistance of:", category, quite far down in a long list, in fact very close to "surprise" -"Beverly Lightfoot" , Gord's sister.

Interestingly, in the categories of "scoring" and soundtrack, they credited 4 primary musicians/singers/songwriters, one of whom was prominently GL for THE song, , and then an elusive and fleeting name of the angelic, beautiful woman's voice that I heard to be the only prominant full-song woman's recording, and right at the end. I must find her CD's. Pop or Celtic/traditional -anything; I love her, I know I do....lol....

Like an idiot, I did not realize it would permit expanding to full-screen, in so far as no anomorphic stretch ( by definition, on one axis, typically horizontal) could be done, so the "square" film-frame window would go to full height of the screen, and by virtue of being square, only about 2/3 of the width of the tube - my old-fashioned CRT.

And this is no plasma or LCD wonderous flatscreen, I accidentally killed mine, I won't bore you with the spontaneous reason, but I unintentionaly flung my hand out and 'squished" the flat panel vunder-childe screen ( you know, I'll take good convex , domed glass strength and scratch resistance, and typically strong enough glass-screened CRT old "tube" 17" anyday) - remember when THAT big upgrade cost like 300-400 more than the stock 14" diagonal measure job...lol.

now the larger,"squishy" flat screen LCD's are I believe less than 1/2 the price of smallest, older CRT tube upgrade sizes/ Point being - I could barely make out until I expanded (wow woa dude..... duh... lol) the screen to fullsize, and could read the credits better. I'm not really that stupid on full-screen expansion, I've only grown accustomed to not beng ABLE to with my system here I am using temporarily wile my cold-fusion powered Da Vinci-wondrous Dell XPS "experimental " high end laptop I got 3 yeara ago is in repair.

Its true 16:9 screen is rare in laptops , then at least, maxed out on everything when memory was not $2 per gig of RAM lol..... I had over $1500 worth of extra memory alone - RAM, not including L2 , CACHE, and one other level I am no expert in , now that formerly $5k laptop (groan) then, is now equivalent to- $2k or so ,fully configured with traction bars and Holley Double Pumpers.. lol. Oh well.

Anyway - this beautiful woman's voice I MUST find her recordings, which may be in traditional Celtic genre from the sound of it, but her voice made my mustache hairs stand straight out from goosebumps, a weird and dopey-looking phenomenon with me ..lol..true...lol. I...MUST.. KNOW...HER...Captain Kirk-style bad imitation.... as near as I could read - her name read "Lisa Gylkinson (sp?) she could 'shift octaves' (?) with her voice the way is so poular now with the 20 -30 age set of female singers, Sarah McLachlan being best-of-breed IMO - no surprise, as you all know I am sure - her father - Murry McLachlan was an off-and-on best of friends with Gordon for long periods inexplicably -

the media stunk the way they inferred with one of the 12 classic fallacies of Logic in jounalism: in absence of info, create an inference without saying there is anything negative, just establish no reports of positive, and the reader makes the illogical leap . So it is inferred he and Gord were not good friends; even at odds, for periods of time, then would return to fickle friendship, but ,true ? *&^%$ I hate it when they (media) do that.

Anyhoo, young Sarah McLachlan grew up around her Dad and Gord hanging out, she knows Gord, maintains she loves his music, and has done "one" cover to my knowledge, of GL - with a great rendition of SFAWN.
Anyway, Point being there - her voice comes closest in qualities to this Lisa Gylkinson I MUST know who she is and what music category- not that they ever got Gord's genre correct in anything - reviews, record stores, etc.

Gord laughs in concert he is now most frequently out of Folk sections in CD stores, and into either Male Vocalist lol - along with Jerry Vale and Bing Crosby......or more often now - Adult Contemporary - which I heard him quip in concert in Denver in 1998 as I recall "makes him sound like an up-to-date but aging adult-film star", he said lol......

Lastly, a Q in my mind about soundtrack, yes they credit him prominently - "they" being the big benefactor that appears to be primary Endowment to make the documentary - DowChemical at the top and largest font of the funding agents to the film. Well , I can tell I am getting too tired to write coherently right now, but his song Ghosts of Cape Horn is also heard in overall scoring here and there in many ways/times - from a simple sailor's historical squeeze box organ, to fully symphonic bits and pieces, here and there.. sometimes quite prominently. is that not general scoring, at least in part ?

No mention made of that,.... but i DO NOT KNOW THE INDUSTRY CONVENTION for that; its probably fine and respectably acknowledging Gord's contribution of ,frankly, many different ways to play the song. All was well, I am sure;Gord spoke positively of the project in the Soundstage '79 footage during his singing of the song.

Great find and contribution, Martin. Thanks again. :clap::headbang: